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\f0\b\fs24 \cf2 Climate Change Will Make Europe\'92s Migrant Crisis Even Worse
\b0 \
by Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis\
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\cf2 Dec. 21, 2017 \'96 A\'a0new scientific study\'a0published Thursday reawakened a fraught debate over one of the more contested, and potentially devastating, consequences of a warming climate: changing patterns of human migration.\
The work, by 2 researchers at Columbia University
\b ,\'a0
\b0 examined potential links between swings in temperature in 103 countries and the volume of asylum applications to the European Union over the 15-year period between 2000 and 2014. The authors then tried to determine the likely rise in asylum applications as the Earth grows warmer between now and 2100.\
Their analysis? That the E.U. could see a 28% increase in applications under \'93moderate\'94 global warming condition, and as much as a 188% spike \'97 or 660,000 more applications annually \'97 under more severe warming.\
\'93200, 300 years ago, there were mass crop failures in Europe. And that led to huge migration decisions,\'94 said Wolfram Schlenker, the Columbia economist who authored the study with\'a0doctoral student Anouch Missirian. \'93But I was surprised that, even in today\'92s environment, we find this significant and robust relationship.\'94\
The work, published in the journal\'a0
\i Science
\i0 , follows\'a0still-contested research from 2015\'a0that focused on the potential role of climate change in the crisis in Syria. It contended that a drought between 2007 and 2010 in the Fertile Crescent region helped impel the political dissolution that followed, and that\'a0the drought itself had been made more likely to occur\'a0because of a warming climate.\
In the new study, whose data does not include the period in which Europe saw a truly dramatic spike in migration beginning in 2015, Missirian and Schlenker do not assert that human-caused climate change is driving current\'a0migration patterns. Instead, it simply finds asylum applications swing as temperatures deviate from a climatic optimum of around 68\'b0F.\
\'93We look at in each country, if you\'92re hotter than normal or colder than normal, does it increase your applications?\'94 Schlenker said.\
The research found that weather fluctuations accounted for only a small part of the\'a0roughly 352,000 asylum applications on average each year for the period between 2000 through 2014 \'97 but that a statistical relationship did exist. Specifically, the study examined\'a0temperatures\'a0fluctuations suggesting a possible link between reduced agricultural productivity and the desire to migrate to another country.\
The authors then take the more striking \'97 and\'a0potentially controversial \'97\'a0step of projecting the number of future asylum applications in the E.U., based on the expected rise in temperatures caused by climate change.\'a0Schlenker acknowledged that the effort involves considerable uncertainty.\'a0 \'93There are obviously many other factors beyond weather that impact asylum applications,\'94 he said.\
Academics and experts consulted by the
\i Washington Post
\i0 had divided reactions to the work.\
Marshall Burke, a Stanford researcher who has published work on the relationship between warming temperatures and increased risks of conflict between and within nations, called the\'a0study \'93an excellent paper on a very important, much hypothesized, and still poorly understood topic.\'94\
\'93The potential link between climate and migration has been talked about a lot, but there haven\'92t been any studies that have been able to make a clear link at a broad scale, and at the same time understand what the potential mechanism is. And this paper does both, which is a huge contribution,\'94 he\'a0said in an email.\
Mike Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, said he found several flaws in\'a0the study, including the inherent uncertainty of trying to predict relatively precise numbers of future asylum seekers based merely on projections of an increase in global temperatures. \'93They are making a claim 83 years into the future \'85 I just don\'92t believe the plausibility of those numbers. The world changes,\'94 Hulme said. \'93It\'92s a put-your-finger-in-the-wind kind of number.\'94\
Hulme also said the study \'93oversimplifies\'94 the problem of mass migrations, by focusing on climate as a primary driver. \'93I\'92d want to find out what is the most decisive\'a0factor that shapes asylum-seeking behaviors, not can I prove that temperature is a factor? It\'92s a different question,\'94 he said. \'93Trying to reduce the complexity of migration, refugee and\'a0asylum-seeking\'a0behaviors \'85 to simply a temperature predictor isn\'92t anywhere close to faithful\'a0representation of reality.\'94\
Michael Werz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has studied the intersection between climate change and societal upheaval, had reservations about the study\'92s conclusions, though he called\'a0the study \'93one important piece of the puzzle, but it\'92s not the only one.\'94\
He said it is difficult enough to determine a causal relationship between global warming and migratory movements, and even more fraught to try to predict specific numbers of asylum seekers in the future.\'a0 The study notes that formal asylum seekers are only\'a010% of the total number of people who migrated during the study period in question.\
\'93The motivation is complex, and so is the science,\'94 Werz said. Though he added that evidence continues to grow that changing climates will force certain populations to seek refuge elsewhere.\
\'93There is a mass of evidence that climate is\'a0impacting\'a0the way that people behave. Also substantial evidence that climate is a likely driver or contributor to massive migratory movements.\'a0 It\'92s hard to argue it\'92s the only driver, but it is certainly a driver.\'94\
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\cf2 www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/12/21/climate-change-will-drive-more-migration-to-europe-study-asserts/?utm_term=.5ad0c8e53fb9&wpisrc=nl_green&wpmm=1}